Environmental awareness is the first step to saving the world’s resources. The next step is providing practical measures that everyone can include in their daily habits.
The past decade has been the warmest on record, with 2016 the warmest year ever. Meanwhile, the northern hemisphere has already lost a million square miles of spring snowpack since 1970. Snow levels are rising in elevation and winters are shorter.
By 2007, pro snowboarder Jeremy Jones found that many areas that he had always counted on for good riding were closed due to lack of snow and he felt the need to act. But he couldn’t find any organisations focused on mobilizing the snow sports community on climate - so Jeremy founded Protect Our Winters (POW).
Soon afterwards, POW brought on other concerned professional athletes, individuals, resorts and winter sports companies. Since then, Protect Our Winters has grown into a worldwide network of over 150,000 supporters – a social movement on climate, designed to activate a passionate community and create the political will for meaningful action by state and federal policymakers. Now the next step is to involve winter sports governing body, FIS, by encouraging the next generation to look after their snow playgrounds.
FIS President Gian Franco Kasper commented: “Combining Protect Our Winters message with the next generation through Bring Children to the snow is correct way to make a long term impactful change. This a very exciting partnership for all involved.”
Manager of Development and Operations, Torrey Udall added, ”At Protect Our Winters, we are always working to educate and advocate for the future of the snowsports community. By partnering with FIS and Bring Children to the Snow we are aligning around our shared goal of extending the gift of skiing to all future generations and simultaneously helping young skiers become environmental stewards.
The partnership with POW will start a number of actions that will make it easier for World Snow Day and SnowKidz Organisers to include environmental elements in their event programmes. Additionally Bring Children to the Snow will also look at aligning POW runs events with SnowKidz and World Snow Day as well providing tips and tricks the public can do at home to look after their natural surroundings.
For more information on POW visit www.protectourwinters.org
For more information on World Snow Day visit www.world-snow-day.com
For more information on SnowKidz visit www.snowkidz.com
Press Release FIS Bring Children to the Snow Wed, September 6, 2017
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